June 20, 2011

Music for dancing

It’s Jacques Offenbach’s birthday today, so raise your glass to the man who gave the world the music for the can-can.

What would the Moulin Rouge have been without him? What would Toulouse-Lautrec have done without the Moulin Rouge? (We must have La Goulue here, even if it’s only a thumbnail.)

It wasn’t called the can-can when Offenbach (1819-1880) wrote the piece for his Orpheus and the Underworld, an operetta satirizing Gounod’s Orfee et Eurydice – that came later. But it certainly was written to stir the blood and still does.

Listen to some Austrians doing the Galop Infernal and jump-start your metabolism – it’s almost as good as caffeine: